newscientist.com — A pocket-sized device that runs on two AA batteries and copies DNA as accurately as expensive lab equipment has been developed by researchers in the US.The device has no moving parts and costs just $10 to make. It runs polymerase chain reactions (PCRs), to generate billions of identical copies of a DNA strand, in as little as 20 minutes.
May 2, 2007 View in Crawl 4
spacemonkeyzeroMay 3, 2007
I'll pretend to understand the article and Digg it for SCIENCE!
kibibytebrainMay 3, 2007
The problem with trying to clone anything with just its DNA is that DNA only contain the instructions for making the organism as much as a compiled binary file contains the instructions for running a program. Sure, it will run fine, under the correct environmental condition(right CPU, right OS, right me memory architecture, etc). But remove any of those, and its just a bunch of jibberish. We don't have a female dinosaur to look at or anything even close to one. So the DNA is just useless data until we find the other half of the puzzle: the machine to run it.
menacingcheeseMay 3, 2007
@ChompyLets not get carried away here. He's basically created a simple thermocycler. While that is cool, its not like the thermocycler was ever the really complex part of PCR. The complex part is the polymerase, nucleotides, and primers that actually perform the reaction, and by the way are by far the most expensive part of performing PCR. Also I'd be curious to know if the annealing temperature could be accurately adjusted on this thing since having the right annealing temp can make the difference between a clean PCR product and a really s**tty one.
prlmeMay 3, 2007
Now all I need is a strand of hair from Elizabeth Hurley and its so onn!<a class="user" href="http://64.176.220.191/images/event_images/MainElizabethHurley120050512_101411.jpg">http://64.176.220.191/images/event_images/MainElizabethHurley120050512_101411.jpg</a>
ridgelawrenceMay 3, 2007
He has quite a few 10$ Mini DNA replicaters in his body? IN EVERY CELL?
thecrushahMay 3, 2007
One possible way of distinguishing between PCR created DNA and native DNA is methylation. PCR DNA will not be methylated. In fact there are several simple experiments that could tell the difference between the two.
badapplestudioMay 3, 2007
~~...it's a good day for Homicide..
senseigmgMay 3, 2007
We spent close to $400 for 1ml of Taq Poly, but used .25uL per 1uL purified DNA. Either way, this is not going to be a cheap process ever.